Last Sunday we, five of nine singers from #koraleriet, sang chorales at the medieval inspired service in Heliga Kors church in Ronneby.

One of the chorales sung was the all-time-high-hit Den Signade Dag, which oldest found transmission in writing is dated to 1450.This chorale has been sung continuously for hundreds of years and ties together catholicism and protestantism.

Our version of melody was noted down by Nils Stålberg, and sung to him by Ingrid Isaksson, who lived in a small cottage in the village Röaby, some km north of Bräkne-Hoby in Blekinge.

The musical arrangements are made by Kristin Borgehed,after detailed analyses of how melody interacts with pronunciation patterns in that very local dialect.

At this year’s Korrö Folkmusic Festival FPA contributed with two happenings. A workshop mediating tunes with mainly Blekinge material and also one of my “seminar-concerts”, which I held on Thursday night. This time the theme was cultural connections around the Baltic Sea. I was happy to notice that the dark Old Mill (Kvarnen) soon was filled and that there seemed to be quite a crowd outside that couldn’t get in, due to both lack of space and high interest in the subject.

I took the audience on a path through experiences that we in Folk Practice Academy have collected from our projects Baltic Sea Inter Cult, Baltic Trad(e) and Basic – Folk & Tradition. But I also lifted som really interesting details of dance descriptions that Kristin and I have found in the archives of Nordiska Museet and through our meetings with old singers and fiddlers.

The audience showed a dedicated interest in the subject and several of them gave some nice feedback after the session; “This was the best I have ever experienced at Korrö!”, “You have to write a book!”, “This should be made into a film!”

It seems as if the subjects we constantly are poking at fill a need. People have an urge to talk about immaterial heritage. Where do cultural expressions derive from? How can we make a complex picture more understandable? How does geography, time, development, society, political implications, etc colour the way we perceive traditional music? And how can the music we love to play and sing be connected to knowledge allowing questions and discussions to flourish?

With me on stage, I also had my daughter Agnes, who is one of the dedicated youth we have in FPA, and she mastered the Polish drum with excellence while I played a couple of tunes from Suwalki.

I also managed to break a string while retuning, but having fiddlers in the audience is a true bliss. Thank you from all my heart, you anonymous who gave me a new G-string!

More singers on their way? We gathered by the ferry to Hästholmen in the Karlskrona archipelago, for a day of traditional sailor, sailing and water songs. Among them sea shanties, dance tunes, and hymns.

Women of all generations singing loudly out to the Baltic Sea, and the next generation of singers is gradually being secured!!

Passionate singing!

Songs about the symbolism of bare feet dipped in either the sea or in red wine…

The singing session was organised together with the local traditional boats club.

Hej friends! Within Ethnography, we often tend to talk about field work, not really sure of if people know what it may look like. To overcome this we want to share some various pictures from Folk Practice Academy’s field work the past four years – enjoy!!

Astrid leading a session with Swedish, Polish and Estonian musicians in Ronneby during the Baltic Trad/e Conference January 2013“Julstuga”, a traditional Christmas music party at Astrid’s, in Jernavik December 2012Kristin teaching the young talents of Baltic Sea Inter Cult, before a dance concert at Korrö 2012some workdays are analysing our Swedish singers in a remote corridor at a London airport…Teaching ballads at Backafestivalen, July 2013.The fabulous singing weekend in Scotland!!#koraleriet – the project with female voices doing Protestant and Catholic hymnsLivatWiwat – the Polish/Swedish big bandJulstuga Jernavik, December 2014.Basic Folk and Tradition, our latest project with young people, folk music and folk arts.

For a much bigger gallery of folk music and folk art pictures, please take a look at our Facebook webpage.

Hi there!
Even though we prefer working at home back in the countryside 😉 this week’s meeting took place in Stockholm. While Astrid has been conducting her consultant work with web strategies for a big urban company, Kristin has presented her folk singing research at the ICTM Sweden. More to find about her research on #libertéegalitétonalité here and on facebook!!

We are currently at a café, planning away! We got some nice invitations for #koraleriet to consider, and also some nice aspects from the ICTM seminar to bring with us into our further work.